


Avoir un petit creux

by Bamf_babe



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Chiyoh has not murdered at all but she's not really opposed to it, Chiyoh-centric, Gen, Hannibal has murdered a little but only the amount required for a growing boy his age, Hate Speech, Murder Family, Mute Hannibal Lecter, Muteness, Panic Attacks, Sign Language, Teen Hannibal Lecter, Young Hannibal Lecter, and Chiyoh is 12, and it's very brief - Freeform, but it's Chiyoh Hannibal Robert and Murasaki, but the dude gets fucked up, that's right he's around 14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bamf_babe/pseuds/Bamf_babe
Summary: The first time Chiyoh met Hannibal Lecter he was smiling, a laugh on the tip of his tongue as he chased after his sister.The second time Chiyoh met Hannibal Lecter he was alone, withdrawn and sullen with far-too sunken cheekbones and a story he refused to tell.
Relationships: Chiyoh & Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 4
Collections: Hannibal flashfic 7





	Avoir un petit creux

Chiyoh wanted to believe her parents loved her. They never said otherwise and for the first part of her life, that was all she needed. The lack of rejection was seen as acceptance. When her parents first brought her to her Aunt Murasaki’s at ten years old she thought of it like a treat, vacation. She had never been out of the country before and she was excited to go to France. Her Aunt Murasaki had married a Lithuanian Count the year before and they were currently living together in a nice house on the banks of the Essonne River inVert-le-Petit in the Île-de-France region. She vaguely remembered her mother telling her that perhaps she could have her aunt take her into the city and see the Eiffel Tower. 

She had boarded the plane alone at such a young age and been picked up by a driver for her Aunt. The house, the first time she saw it, had seemed so large. The wrought iron gates appeared to tower over her but just beyond them in the small front yard was her Aunt, sitting straight on her seat’s edge, teacup raised to her lips. A maid stood behind Murasaki, holding an umbrella over her head. 

“Ah, Chiyoh,” her aunt said to her in Japanese, “You are here! Come closer, I haven’t seen you in years!”

Chiyoh ducked her head, still feeling a bit unsure and moved closer to her aunt, clutching her luggage tight. 

“Hello Lady Murasaki,” she stated politely from a distance.

Her Aunt waved her hand, “None of that now, call me Aunt.”

Chiyoh nodded and then heard the sound of a young girl laughing. Her head moved up quickly, looking in the direction the sound had come from. From behind the house came a blonde girl, perhaps five years old with blond hair in braids wrapped in a crown around her head. Her arms in front of her, the young child ran right towards Chiyoh. Then just after the girl, a boy ran out after her, perhaps a year or two older than Chiyoh herself. He had very straight brown hair and a wide smile on his face. 

The girl jumped up towards Chiyoh and she caught the younger child in surprise. The older boy slid to a sudden stop and looked down the scant height he had over Chiyoh and the smile dropped from his face. There was a danger in his eyes and he looked up and down Chiyoh. She recognized that look. He was analyzing her. 

“Who are you?” the boy said in French. 

Luckily, Chiyoh knew enough French to say in return, “Chiyoh, Lady Murasaki’s niece.”

He sniffed his nose and then looked at his sister and his demeanor changed. An easy smile came onto his face and his voice sounded sweeter as he said, “Now where could Mischa be?”

The boy walked around Chiyoh looking everywhere but at the girl in her arms. He made a show of stopping right in front of Chiyoh and rubbing his chin, “Well then, if I can’t find Mischa I will have to go inside and just eat all of Uncle’s deserts myself.”

The girl, who had been giggling into Chiyoh’s shoulder, lifted her head and said, “No big brother! Not without me!”

She began wriggling so Chiyoh set her down and the girl ran over to the boy who patted her hair gently, not disturbing the braids. 

The little girl clutched at the boy’s pants and the two of them looked at Chiyoh until the girl shyly said, “I’m Mischa, and this is my uncle’s.”

The boy had both his hands on the girl’s shoulder and said, “And I am Hannibal.”

She could tell that French was not their native language so she assumed they were Lithuanian like Rober Lecter. 

Chiyoh looked back at her Aunt who was giving her a grin and made a shooing motion with her hand, clearly indicating that Chiyoh should go with them. 

“Put your luggage down and I will have someone take it up to your room. Go have fun with Hannibal and Mischa for now. Tomorrow, we will begin lessons and it won’t be all games.”

Still unsure, Chiyoh nodded and set her small suitcase down, walking besides Hannibal into the house. 

She felt a small hand paw at her own and looked down to see Mischa grasping at her hand. Chiyoh looked at Hannibal who was still smiling softly at Mischa so she took the small hand and they walked to the kitchen. There, a chef was cooking what appeared to be different courses for dinner. 

Hannibal looked up at the chef and said, “Could there be some treats for me and my sister please?”

The chef laughed saying, “Just a small treat, your uncle would have my head if you two didn’t eat.”

In a few moments, there was a small plate of what looked like cookies but the chef called canistrelli in front of them which Hannibal was dipping into a small cup of warm milk. 

Chiyoh sat down and looked over, “So why are you two visiting your uncle?”

Hannibal shrugged and said, “My father had business in Paris so he lets us stay with Uncle so him and mother can focus on whatever business there is. What about you?”

“My parents wanted me to visit my aunt in the hopes of learning something new and experiencing more things.”

Mischa poked her head out to the side so she was looking at Chiyoh from around Hannibal, “Are you going to go see the city?”

Chiyoh nodded, “I am hoping too.”

Mischa looked up at Hannibal with pleading eyes, “We should go too!”

Hannibal looked over at Chiyoh with a calculating look in his eyes, “I know the city well enough that we might not need an escort.”

Chiyoh was hesitant, “We would still be pretty young to be traveling the city alone.”

“There are enough children our age who play in the streets. We would be fine if we stick to the right parts of town.”

“I’m in,” she said and Hannibal smiled.

“We should go now.”

Chiyoh straightened up, “Now?” She asked in surprise. 

Hannibal got off his stool, shrugging as he stood up, “Why not? We have at least 4 hours left of sunlight and it only takes 30 min to walk into the city.”

They told an attendant as the three of them left the house but not their relatives, which Chiyoh was privately worried might get them in trouble but Hannibal didn’t seem too concerned. While they walked into the city Chiyoh got to know the siblings. Hannibal was very protective of Mischa but was also a pushover. She had asked to be picked up and set down at least four times and Hannibal had done so without complaint. To her, he was more calculating and Chiyoh didn’t know if it was because she was practically a stranger or this is just how Hannibal was with everyone who wasn’t Mischa. 

He was quick-witted and Chiyoh was able to easily keep up a conversation with Hannibal. This was the only time Chiyoh would ever meet Mischa Lecter, not that she knew this at the time. When she thinks back to their trip into the city, Hannibal stating obscure facts about the Parisian Architecture around them, Mischa looking at the lights in awe, Chiyoh thinks of the two siblings and how caring Hannibal was towards his sister. She would think of the confident boy who led them through the tourists and locals of the Paris streets and of how Hannibal stepped in front of his upset Uncle when they got back, saying going on the trip was his idea. 

She remembers the two of them as a unit, inseparable from one another. Perhaps that was why, when she walked to a train station two years later to pick up Hannibal who was coming to stay with his uncle permanently, he seemed so incomplete standing by himself. 

That first visit when she was ten seemed to be an introduction for her parents. Once she told her family she liked staying with her Aunt, they began sending her there regularly. In fact, once she turned eleven her mother told her that she would be staying at her Aunt’s for schooling now. Chiyoh wanted to believe her parents loved her but they kept sending her away every chance they got. She thinks they were afraid of her. 

Her aunt was never afraid of her. She took Chiyoh hunting, teaching her small hands to shoot a rifle, to skin a pheasant. Aunt Murasaki didn’t mind when Chiyoh asked to go hunting every weekend, when she sometimes played a little too rough, when she came up with a touch-too realistic graphic imaginative scenarios. 

During her eleventh year, Chiyoh was called to the study twice. The first time, her Aunt had stood there, face stern, holding a letter in her hands. And when she spoke, her voice was gentle. 

“Chiyoh,” her Aunt had begun, “Your parents just sent me a letter. They are so impressed with the work we have been doing, they want me and Robert to take over custody for you full-time.”

At the time, it had been painful but not unbearable. Chiyoh still disillusioned herself that this was temporary. It was only three years later during her Uncle’s funeral she had found the papers that had been titled, “waiver of parental rights.”

The second time Chiyoh was called in the study her Aunt informed her that his brother and wife were dead and that Hannibal was coming to stay with them. She asked about Mischa but her uncle said nothing and her aunt simply gained this look of sadness. 

The day Hannibal was to be picked up by the train station, all three of them were supposed to be there. However, and error occurred in a shipment arriving with some clothes and good for Hannibal so her Aunt and Uncle politely asked her to run to the train station and pick Hannibal up herself. 

She was expecting to meet him with Mischa, but when she walked over, he was alone. He had circles under his eyes and although he had grown in the year since Chiyoh had seen him, he seemed thinner, more drawn. There was a haunted look in his eyes. 

“Is Mischa coming?” She asked. 

Hannibal flinched at the sound of his sister’s name and shook his head, lips pressed thin. 

Chiyoh wondered at his silent response but elected not to say anything. She turned around and began walking back towards her Aunt’s house. 

There was an awkward air between them. Chiyoh didn’t know where to start the conversation, her mind consumed with questions on where Mischa could be. The tense silence stayed until Hannibal arrived inside the yard and was enveloped in a hug by his aunt and uncle. 

“It’s okay Hanni,” his uncle said, running a hand over his hair, “You are with us now, we are sorry it took so long to find you.”

Hannibal dropped his small suitcase and clutches his hands in his Uncle’s shirt and tears start streaming down his face. The entire time he was silent. 

His uncle picked Hannibal up, despite him almost being too larger for his uncle to pick up, and carried him inside. 

Chiyoh looked at her Aunt, who had tears in her eyes, “What happened to Mischa?” Chiyoh asked. 

“She’s dead,” her aunt said, voice drawn. 

That night, Chiyoh was awoken by the sound of screams. They echoed through the house, sounding scared and alone. She snuck out of bed and walked to the bedroom where Hannibal was staying. He has screaming, thrashing in his bed, with his Uncle holding his shoulder, trying to wake him up. He was screaming Misca’s name, over and over again. 

When Hannibal woke up he jolted, all sound stopping at once and began to cry again. The next morning, Hannibal looked down at his food and refused to eat. He looked sick. His Uncle was able to persuade him into eating some toast but not much else. 

Over the next few weeks, Chiyoh got to know this new version of Hannibal. He carried around a writing pad and a pencil so he could write his thoughts out in shaky french and as a result, did not often contribute to conversation as he had before. 

He refused to eat and when he did it was also bland food and the one time they had stew for dinner Hannibal ran out of the room and Chiyoh could hear him dry-heaving. His Uncle and Aunt tried to get him in to see a therapist as soon as they possibly could. There was one right down the street they were able to get an appointment to go and see, Dr. Rufin. There was a tiny garden out front and a nice waiting room with some interesting books. 

Chiyoh had gone with the three of them, being asked to sit in the waiting room while the Doctor evaluated Hannibal. Then, after half an hour, Hannibal had come out and her Aunt and Uncle were invited back. 

Hannibal seemed a bit worse-off. When she touched his arm, he was shaking. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head and then grabbed his pencil, writing out,  _ He tried to hypnotize me. Ask me about... _ he set the pencil down but Chiyoh knew what he was not saying. 

There were voices coming from behind the door separating the waiting room and the study. Chiyoh smirked, “Want to hear what they are saying about you?”

Hannibal looked at her and nodded and they both crouched down to the ground, ear on the seam of the door, trying to listen in. 

They heard Dr. Rufin talking. 

“I tried to ask him further about his sister, but he closed down,” the doctor said. The count stood behind Lady Murasaki’s chair in the examining room. “To be frank, he is perfectly opaque to me. I have examined him and physically he is sound. I find scars on his scalp but no evidence of a depressed fracture. But I would guess the hemispheres of his brain may be acting independently, as they do in some cases of head trauma, when communication between the hemispheres is compromised. He follows several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any, and one of the trains is always for his own amusement.

“He will not say what happened to his sister. I think he knows, whether he realizes it or not, and here is the danger: The mind remembers what it can afford to remember and at its own speed. He will remember when he can stand it. I would not push him, and it’s futile to try to hypnotize him. If he remembers too soon, he could freeze inside forever to get away from the pain. You will keep him in your home?”

“Yes,” his Aunt and Uncle both said quickly.

Rufin nodded. “Involve him in your family as much as you can. As he emerges, he will become more attached to you than you can imagine.”

Then there was the shuffling noise of people moving and then Hannibal and Chiyoh were racing back to their seats, sitting properly as their Aunt and Uncle came out of the study. Hannibal scowled as they looked at him with smiles, likely thinking it was pity. She didn’t blame him. In some ways, her and Hannibal were very similar people and Chiyoh knew for herself, if she heard someone talking about her like a piece of meat, like a project like Rufin did, she would expect all affection to be sourced in pity. 

She should find a way for her and Hannibal to communicate, properly communicate. For a while, Chiyoh struggled to find an answer. Clearly, writing was not fast enough. She had to find a language Hannibal would be able to use. Then, in a book tucked away at the large local library, she found it. 

Proudly, Chiyoh walked into Hannibal’s room and set the book down on his bed with a thump and pointing at the cover saying, “We can learn this.”

Hannibal, who was reading in bed, looked over at the title curiously. It read, “La Langue des Signes.” 

He cocked an eyebrow at her and Chiyoh huffed, “I know you want to be able to communicate. I can tell every time you have thoughts you simply can’t say. Aunt and Uncle think that the answer is getting you to speak again, but there are other ways to communicate.”

She moved the book towards him and he opened it. The longer he looked, a smile began to rise on his face. It was the first time she had seen something other than a frown so far. 

Learning French Sign Language was a complex undertaking but between the two of them, there was enough talent that within a few months they could hold short conversations and within a year they could speak rapidly between one another. Their familiarity also helped and they knew the small variances and quirks each other had in their signing so they could read each other faster. 

In this time, Hannibal continued to not speak a word and see Dr. Rufin. He was sent to the village school for just one week but ended up joining Chiyoh’s lessons at home after he broke a boy’s coccyx and nose. 

When Hannibal had come home that day, Chiyoh had seen a glint of excitement in his eyes. It was the look that reminded of the one she got when she first met Hannibal. She wondered for the first time how exactly Mischa had died. And if Hannibal had anything to do with it. 

Their progress in the language allowed Hannibal’s personality to come back piece by piece. The one difficulty was that since he could truly only effectively communicate with Chiyoh, she bore witness to the entirety of Hannibal’s thoughts. Their Aunt and Uncle learned as much as they could but they couldn’t sign fast enough or understand enough to talk at a truly conversational pace so Hannibal talking to them was always slightly stilted and awkward. 

Her Aunt made sure that their lessons included all the topics and knowledge they would both need to be successful. She taught them art and calligraphy, mathematics, sciences, literature. Hannibal especially took to the arts while Chiyoh enjoyed music, she was a fair hand at the lute and often played it in the garden late at night. 

Hannibal liked to test her. He thought it was interesting to compare their skill sets and learn together. On still evenings, when the air was damp after a rain, they played the Aroma Identification Game. Hannibal burned a variety of barks and incense on a mica chip for Chiyoh to identify. There was always a smell in the air on these nights that made the incense seemingly stronger. Petrichor, her Aunt told her when asked. The smell of earth after rain. Hannibal was a predator but Chiyoh liked the feeling of being favored by the predator. It made her feel powerful, to be able to control and be accepted by such a picky predator. 

Over time, their life became routine. Hannibal was surly and uncooperating when it came to everyone but his family, still refusing to open up and having nightmares every other night. Chiyoh continued to learn, trying not to think of her family off in Japan, uninterested in her. 

One day the two of them were sitting on the banks of the Essone, throwing rocks into the stream. Then Hannibal looked up and set down the rock he was holding, signing to Chiyoh,  _ “We should go somewhere.” _

She raised an eyebrow, signing back,  _ “Where.” _

Hannibal shrugged, “I’m just tired of being here.” Then he began walking away and Chiyoh pushed up off the ground and ran over to Hannibal. 

_ “Let’s head to the museum, I know you love looking at the sculptures.” _

Hannibal nodded and the two of them made their way to a museum on the outskirts of the city with a sign saying they were going to be opening a new exhibit soon, a statue from Naples,Veiled Truth by Antonio Corradini. Hannibal seemed excited to see it and the two of them walked into the museum and Hannibal appeared to be in a good mood. 

_ “I do love looking at art,” _ he signed towards Chiyoh. 

_ “You just like knowing more about art than everyone else around you.” _

Hannibal shrugged, _ “That too.” _

A small crowd was around one particular painting so they made their way over to see what the bustle was about. 

“So grotesque,” one woman was saying. 

“But such a daring depiction of the deprecation of man,” said another.

They shoved their way to the front and Chiyoh saw the image. It was in shades of yellow and depicted three men stringing up the body of another. They seemed hunched over and feral and their faces were distorted. Hannibal had stopped, frozen, staring at the plaque on the image. It read “Cannibals preparing their victim ~Francisco Goya.”

Hannibal’s face paled and he turned around, running off into the museum. Chiyoh recognized that face from when he woke up after a nightmare so she chased after him. He ran into a side-hall and down a staircase, into the museum archives. 

When Chiyoh finally caught up to him, she's out of breath. She grabbed his collar and spun him around, “What do you think you are doing?” She cried out. 

Hannibal some aborted gasping noises and Chiyoh saw tears gathering in his eyes. His breath began coming, shallow and quick. He tried to put his hands to his head but they were shaking too much. He began to sink to the ground so Chiyoh took her hands off his collar and let him go to the ground. 

They were leaning against a statue. It appeared that they were in the backrooms of the museum, somehow Hannibal had run in here in his panic and Chiyoh hadn’t noticed their location. 

The statue above them was a woman in a veil, arms outstretched. There were stone roses on her waist and a book behind her. She appeared to be looking to her left in supplication. This must be the new exhibit that was going to be revealed soon. Veiled Truth. 

She looked to her right where Hannibal was sitting, knees tucked close to his chest. 

Chiyoh let out a breath, “If you want to talk,” she spoke out loud, “I will not judge. I will simply listen.”

Hannibal untucked himself, his face raising up to look at Chiyoh. There were tears streaming down his face. 

He began signing on shaky hands, “We survived the initial attack. Misch and me.”

For Mischa’s name, Hannibal signed M in conjunction with beloved. Chiyoh wondered how long he had been thinking of the sign for her name. 

“We survived in the woods but were captured by the people who killed our family. They kept up trapped in our own house, unable to escape. It was Winter, it was cold. Mischa became sick. Very sick. Then...then one day she was gone. I couldn’t find her and the men said they took her to the doctor but that night despite the food having run out, we had stew. There was meat in it. We all ate heartily but...I found teeth in my bowl.”

Chiyoh put a hand to her mouth. Oh gods. Her Aunt and Uncle didn’t know this, how could they. This was horrifying, beyond anything she had ever heard before. 

Hannibal was crying now, silent tears moving down his face as his whole body shook. Chiyoh put a hand to his back and he leaned into her. 

She didn’t say anything. Nothing she could have said would have helped. She simply held Hannibal as he cried without sound, allowing the veiled truth to hang over them, watching. 

They walked back to the house, heading through the market instead of the River. On Thursdays the village had a good market under umbrellas around the fountain and statue of Marshal Foch. There was a briny vinegar on the wind from the pickle merchant and the fish and shellfish on beds of seaweed brought the smell of the ocean. Chiyoh appreciated the smells as they were nowhere near the ocean being inland as they were. 

A few radios played rival tunes from different booths. Vegetables, sweets, baked goods and cooking meats overflowed from carts and they saw their Aunt across the way, basket over one arm as she headed towards the vegetable booth. They waved to their Aunt who waved back as they made their way towards her. 

Everyone in the market knew their Aunt and as a result knew them. They paused to watch as a cheese merchant oiled a length of piano wire and used it to cut a great wheel of Grana. The merchant gave him a bite and asked him to recommend it to Madame. Chiyoh held onto Hannibal’s hand, still mindful that he likely was in a fragile place at the moment. 

Their aunt was searching the vegetable stand for fiddleheads, her uncle’s favorite but didn’t appear to find any. The grocer, looking on in dismay at their Aunt finding his booth lacking, brought a basket of the coiled ferns from under his counter. “Madame, these are so superlative I would not allow the sun to touch them. Awaiting your arrival, I covered them with this cloth, dampened not with water, but with actual garden dew.”

Their Aunt titled back her head and laughed a bit saying, “Oh you treat me so nicely, this sounds perfect.”

Across the aisle from the greengrocer, the butcher, Paul Momund, sat in his bloody apron at a butcher-block table cleaning fowl, throwing the offal into a bucket, and dividing gizzards and livers between two bowls. The butcher was a big, beefy man with a tattoo on his forearm—a cherry with the legend Void la Mienne, où est la Tienne? The red of the cherry had faded paler than the blood on his hands. Paul the Butcher’s brother, more suited to dealing with the public, worked the counter under the banner of Momund’s Fine Meats.

Paul’s brother brought him a goose to draw. Paul had a drink from the bottle of marc beside him and wiped his face with his bloody hand, leaving blood and feathers on his cheeks.

Chiyoh watched the blood on the man’s cheek with interest, losing interest completely in what her aunt was doing. Hannibal appeared similarly transfixed. 

“Take it easy, Paul,” his brother said. “We have a long day.”

“Why don’t you pluck the fucking thing? I think you’d rather pluck than fuck,” Paul the Butcher said, to his own intense amusement.

Hannibal was looking at a pig’s head in a display case. Paul looked up at the two of them and a scowl entered his face. 

“Hey Japonnaise!”

Chiyoh looked at the man in anger. Her Aunt similarly whirled around, setting her basket down on the grocer’s booth.

The grocer seemed appalled as well saying, “Please, Monsieur! That is unacceptable.”

But the butcher took no notice, holding a knife and moving around from behind the stand, blood still on his cheek. He appeared to be talking to her Aunt, but his gaze fell long enough to Chiyoh she felt uncomfortable, “Hey Japonnaise, tell me, is it true that your pussy runs crossways? With a little puff of straight hairs like an explosion?”

Chiyoh felt her body shaking. Hannibal had gone still. Very still. 

Paul turned to his brother now. “I’ll tell you, I had one in Marseilles one time that could take your whole—”

He was cut off as Hannibal began running towards the man and grabbed a leg of lamb. Chiyoh watched as the leg of lamb smashing into Paul’s face drove him over backward in a spill of bird intestines, Hannibal on top of him, the leg of lamb rising and slamming down until it slipped from Hannibal’s hand, the boy reaching behind him for the poultry knife on the table, not finding it, finding a handful of chicken innards and smashing them into Paul’s face, the butcher pounding at him with his great bloody hands. 

Chiyoh saw Paul’s brother’s going to kick Hannibal so she too joined the fight, jumping over the stall and landing on the brother’s back. She grabbed at his hair and he let out a cry of anger, clawing at Chiyoh but she stubbornly held on. 

The man grabbed Chiyoh’s hair and she let out a cry as she was dragged in front of the man. Meanwhile, Paul had overpowered Hannibal and was hitting him in the face, pushing Hannibal into the ground and yelling at him expletives. 

A twelve year old girl and a fourteen year old boy were no match for two fully grown men but Chiyoh had held out some hope they would be able to succeed. The brother was yelling at her as well and she tried to twist around in his grip when suddenly the man went still. 

She slowly turned to see her Aunt with a large butcher knife against the butcher’s brother’s throat, exactly where he would stick a pig. 

She said, “Be perfectly still, Messieurs.” 

Both brothers froze for a long moment, the police whistles coming, Paul’s great hands around Hannibal’s throat and his brother’s eye twitching on the side where the steel touched his neck. Chiyoh could see Hannibal’s hand feeling, feeling on the tabletop behind him for the knife he couldn’t find earlier. The two policemen, slipping on the offal, pulled Paul the Butcher and Hannibal apart, an officer prying the boy off the butcher, lifting him off the ground and setting him on the other side of the booth.

Their Aunt slowly stepped away, nodding at the officers. 

Chiyoh rubbed at her hair with one hand and reached for Hannibal with the other. He coughed and spit out a clump of blood. His breath was coming in gasps but then he began to speak. Their aunt gasped in shock. 

Hannibal’s voice was rusty with disuse, but he said one word, clear to understand, “Beast.”

Then Hannibal spit at the ground in front of the butcher and the three of them turned away. As their aunt shook her head, talking about how rude people were now and how that butcher would surely see repercussions, Chiyoh looked over to Hannibal. 

There was blood all over him. Whether it was his own or from the stall itself Chiyoh didn’t know. 

Hannibal looked over at Chiyoh and she saw Hannibal’s own beast under skin. He looked dangerous and Chiyoh wondered if she would be able to escape whatever monster Hannibal had haunting him or if she would be sucked into the game the beast played. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Some parts of this one-shot are adaptations from Hannibal Rising, hope everyone enjoyed it! There is not nearly enough fic about Hannibal and Chiyoh's relationship.


End file.
